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LayShad s04ep05
= Episode Summary = The team is hired by a young technomancer to infiltrate a Mitsuhama Zero Zone. The team is first hired by two "concerned parents" who turn out to be MCT agents in disguise, wanting to capture Suzy, the young technomancer. The Shadowrunners are ambushed by an MCT strike team after rescuing Suzy from the Yakuza. Following the run, Yu is given a message by Suzy via ARO to meet physically at a seaside restaurant. She says that her parents died under interrogation, but that her father had research that she wanted to "liberate" from MCT. She is resolved to do this with or without the Shadowrunners' help, and offered to pay the family's life savings. She mentioned that the security rigger for the facility was a family friend, and that her father was well-liked among his fellow researchers. A quick history scan of Suzy's father (Suzuki Shunma) revealed that he has published some non-controversial biology papers in the last few years, but had a decade where no papers were published at all while working for an MCT thinktank. After meeting with Alexander Farley, the spider who (until recently) ran Zero Zone 63, he agrees to help take Suzy out of the country and help the runners infiltrate the zone, using his intimate knowledge of the layout and his security systems background. He mentions that the base is guarded by 3 spirits, all bound and summoned by the same wagemage, and that a vertical insertion directly on top of the main building will allow the runners to sneak into the facility. If they can sneak past the motion sensors, then a rigger can enter the building's Closed Circuit Simsense and effectively take control of the defenses. They proceed to the wagemage's house and knock him out in his luxurious Space Age home. At one point, Yu fails to hack a couch (to be fair, it was a luxurious gigantic couch). Narukami and Yuna pose as couch repair people and fill the mage with Narcoject, so they can destroy his spirits with impunity. The runners successfully infiltrate the facility (after difficulty with the Spirits, which knocked out the Miko and forced Yuna to punch an Earth Spirit to death). They are accosted by a bio drone with a panther cannon, complicating their escape. The research was on an old pre-Crash-2.0 optical chip. After purchasing an ancient Fairlight Excalibur (only 500 nuyen!), they read the research on the chip. On the chip is some mundane information about a toxic waste treatment plan involving nanites and microbes, but encrypted in the information was a personal diary. On it, the runners discover that Suzuki Shunma was an intern working under Dr. Shelbramat on MCT's Remote Object Manipulation program. The entries reveal that he was involved in horrible experiments in creating brains-in-jars to run drones (basically cyborgs) and had a moral break with his work. He moved to MCT Microtechnical out of obligation to the bio-drone he created. = Reward = * 2000 nuyen and 2 Karma for intro. * 16800 nuyen (the Suzuki's life savings) * 8 Karma (2 Survival, 3 for challenge, 1 for objectives, 2 for "Good Feelings" run) * Security Systems knowledge skill, Rating 1 * Alexander Farley and Suzy as a contact (Connections 1/Loyalty 2) = People Met = * Suzuki Chikaze (aka Suzy) - A nascent young technomancer. Goes to the same school as Yu. * Alexander Farley - Security Rigger, security systems mastermind. = Places Visited = * The Happy Cow cafe - because we can't avoid cows on any Shadowrun. Also, we can't avoid setting things on fire. * Mitsuhama Microtechnical (aka Zero Zone 63) = Memorable Moments = * The Miko sets the cafe on fire in the pre-run. * Yuna gets no hits on a Blades roll, then gets a ton of hits on the Edge reroll during the pre-run. * Narukami fails to hack a couch. * Narukami and Yuna pretend to be couch repairmen. * Narukami and Yuna nearly fail to palm the last keycard. * Yuna punches an Earth Elemntal to smithereens. = Quotes = * "Wait, I got marked by a couch?" - Bryan, on failing to hack a couch. * A Haiku. Alarm's been triggered? Ask the rigger though right now he feels much bigger. - Steve = GM Postmortem = I will freely admit that there were too many moving parts on this one. It was quite complicated, and there was a lot of boring prep work, some of which probably should have been streamlined. I felt that a "Zero Zone" should feel lethal and dangerous and maybe a bit overwhelming, so that was the direction I was going for, but it was a bit of a chore to actually set up in the end. The premise of this run, as you may have guessed, is just to have the Runners encounter and survive an MCT Zero Zone. This is one of the many "legendary" parts of Shadowrun lore, whispered in the shadows just like Fastjack or Lofwyr. Realistically, no Shadowrun team should be able to break a Zero Zone; at least, not on their own. In order to give the runners a fighting chance, I decided to add a few "artificial" weaknesses to the impregnable security of the Zone. The social angle, the spider station, etc. Given the low survival of entering a Zero Zone, I also had to give the runners a potential motivation for helping the younger Suzuki (aside from the mini-run intro). You guys were ready to bail, and rightly so. I introduced the character of Alexander Farley to act as a Nathan Ford/Mastermind for the group. In the past, I've seen in our sessions that it is difficult to formulate a cohesive group plan, and this is common in many Shadowrun games. I gave him the motivation for helping the team (guilt) and gave him the skills and the knowledge that allowed me to pretty much railroad a decent plan for the team, if you guys had trouble coming up with one. Mostly, it was to turn a potentially longer open-ended planning session into a shorter linear session. I'm not sure that fully succeeded, in the end, but it allowed me to process the run as a thought experiment: "If I was a shadowrunner, and I had to break into a Zero Zone, how would I tackle X and Y threats?" I was not expecting the couch gag. That was amazing. I was also not expecting the Miko to go down in the Spirit Banish-a-thon session. That was not amazing. THAT was rough, more rough than I had anticipated. Luckily, Yuna was there to punch that last spirit. I was also not expecting the bio-drone Dalek to blast Yuna into oblivion with such a massive roll. I also didn't know that the Panther Cannon would shred those poor Steel Lynx drones so quickly. The bio-drone was mostly a ham-fisted attempt at tying the elder Suzuki's past and research to his present job. It probably was a bit much, but for a by-the-number run, I wanted some sort of strange surprise at the end. Given that Halberstam is dead, I'm not sure I'll have much brain-in-a-jar shadowruns in the future, but I wanted to link it firmly in the lore. I did enjoy the novel use of Levitate by Steve to get rid of that threat. I probably wouldn't do this particular run again, at least not without some major modifications. I'm still pleased with the "mini-run" intro followed by the actual run.